


Red Sky by Morning

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Chinese Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by asprosdrakos</p><p>She is fifteen when she first learns to swim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Sky by Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Quillori

 

 

Her mother tells her she is quiet, always quiet. Tells her she did not cry when she was born and for long moments the midwife thought she'd been a stillbirth, she was so quiet. 

Moniang, she calls her. My little silent girl. 

It's true, but not entirely so. She's quiet, but she has cause. She's listening.

\----

She is fifteen when she first learns to swim. 

When she does, it is so natural, so easy, like breathing. She can't imagine why she took so long. 

\----

Considering the storms that she has seen - storms with winds that make the sides of their small house shudder, storms with rain so heavy that breathing feels like drowning, storms where the lightning flashes are so constant the night is as bright as day - this storm hardly merits the word. The wind is stronger now, true, and the clouds hang low and heavy with the promise of more rainfall. 

The wind is picking up again, tugging at her clothes, the red cloth wrapping about her, her hair a tangled mass, forever in her face. 

It's wonderful, all of it. The storm and the sea, the fierce wind on the water, churning the waves until the horizon disappears. Until the world narrows to this, this point, this moment where she's standing by the harbor rocks, watching for ships at sea, blood-red clothes like a shout against the gray of sea and sky.

She wouldn't trade it for anything, and, timing her steps to the crash of thunder overhead, Moniang begins to dance.

\----

The storm strikes not quite two weeks past her sixteenth birthday, and it is terrible. Even the wrinkled grandmothers who sit by the breaker rocks, darning nets with gnarled hands and trading secrets cannot recall any storm as bad as this one, and they have been old for as long as Moniang can remember, and alive for longer than she can imagine.

Her brothers and her father had set out at dawn the day before the storm broke. She'd seen them off, watching them sail out until their ship had been lost amid the different shades of yellow and red, the sunrise over the water. Sky as red as the clothes she wears to guide the ships home.

Her mother has forbidden her to go out into this storm, which would not normally stop Moniang, but her mother has also barred shut all the doors to the house, trapped her in this room with her weaving.

Her hands fly back and forth over the small loom but her eyes are closed. She can feel the storm outside and pours its power and fury into her hands. Behind her eyelids the winds dance and rage, taunting the sea into a frenzy. A storm beyond anything she'd dreamed of. She wishes she could see it truly; instead of dreaming it, sitting in this small room in her small house.

(there's a voice. she can almost hear it.)

But she cannot get outside, so she must settle for imagining it. The sky, the sea, the ships tossed about. Her brothers are fine sailors, her father even more so. They would have decided to ride the storm out - it came up so quickly, caught them unawares. They would have dropped most of their sails, kept just enough to catch the wind. Their skill has kept the small boat sailing like a new vessel, but it's made of old wood.

Something could break. This storm is dangerous. Surely though, surely the sea would not keep them from her. 

(calling out. a name - her name, but she's never been called this before.)

She has danced in summer squalls and kept watch through the months of long rains and winds. She learned to swim barely a year ago, and yet no one in the village knows the water like she. If only she could be there now - she'd find some way to let them know, some place where she could stand so they could see her, so that she could make sure they knew to avoid the rocks, to keep hard to starboard while coming in closer to the village harbor. 

(matsu? who is matsu? is she matsu?)

The breaking rocks, the widow rocks. They're dangerous, but she knows where each and every one of them lies. She could tell them, she could -

"Moniang. Moniang. Moniang!"

Her name. That's right. Moniang. Her name, called over and over by her mother, whose face is drawn and pinched tight, frown deepening as Moniang tries to hold on to the other voice, the sibilance of it.

But it's gone. Her hands have stopped their frantic weaving, and figures prance across the cloth spilled onto her loom. She doesn't remember doing this, and she knows that it is not the only thing to have slipped away from her. 

\----

She knows her brothers have returned when the sounds of their heavy footsteps fill their small house, their voices full of the exuberance of the almost-dead.

She knows her father has not returned when her mother begins to weep that night, quietly, as if ashamed.

\----

Two days after the storm, she stands on the edge of the harbor, holding her weaving from that night in her hands.

It tells the story of the storm: a girl dressed in red standing on the waves, calming the sea itself and leading the sailors home. The weave is tight and even, as precise as anything she has ever managed to do, for all that she has no memory of making it. Near the edge it degenerates into a garbled mass of fringe, and Moniang can see the bare outline of a drowning man.

She barely hears her mother approach before feeling the gentle touch of hands in her hair. Her mother's voice is soft, shattered with grief.

"My little silent girl," she says. "Moniang, you mustn't go."

Moniang shakes her head. "I can find him, Mother, I can."

"You mustn't," her mother repeats.

Why won't her mother understand? She can do this - she knows she can. She'll find him. "I know the sea, Mother. I love the sea."

Her mother's eyes are red with weeping, her face wet with tears, although, this close to the water's edge, it could be spray. Her mother is not done with weeping, after all. She kisses her daughter in the exact center of her forehead, like a benediction.

"And the sea loves you, child. And the sea keeps what it loves. I don't want to lose you too, my daughter."

Moniang stares at her mother, at her red-rimmed eyes, her hair stiff with salt and sweat. She takes one step backwards, then two, before turning and walking into the sea.

\----

She was fifteen when she first learned how to swim. She was barely sixteen when she guided her brothers home through the worst storm she'd ever known, and now, two days later, she has swum so far out into the sea that she has lost all sight of shore. It's nothing but the water, and the weight of exhaustion dragging her down. 

Of her father, there is no sign.

There is no shore, no compass. Nothing to anchor her, or provide any hint of direction, of intent. Just the sky and the sea, the drag of the ocean on her clothes, her hair. 

It's almost peaceful here, so very far from shore. She can close her eyes, and let herself drift. Let the very boundaries of herself trickle away, fringes of thought bleeding into her scarlet clothes. The ocean surrounds her, encompasses her, and hints at larger secrets hovering just beyond the edges of what she's capable of understanding. 

So quiet here. And there's a voice - she can almost hear it. 

(matsu) 

She lets go.

\----

Two weeks after Moniang dies, a summer squall appears with all the suddenly realized horror of a ghost. One of the ships is tossed about, blown off course, its crew unable to discern which way to go, how to avoid the rocks when everything's turned sideways by the stinging rain.

But there's a girl, dressed all in red, balanced on the surface of the water as if it were as still and solid as glass. 

And she's dancing.

 


End file.
